Monday, August 4, 2014

The Horrors of Mao Zedong: A Reading List

I am something of a Mao expert. I have read all the major English biographies of Mao and other books relating to the Mao era.

Of the evil trinity of Mao, Stalin, and Hitler, Mao was by far the worst. The "living" conditions he imposed during the Great Leap Forward were worse than those created by Pol Pot, and Mao killed far more than 40 million people during his entire life.

Libertarians have much to learn from Chinese history, but this area is much neglected by libertarians.

I strongly recommend the following books, for they are both terrifying and highly edifying for libertarians:

3 comments:

On the subject of Stalin and evil commies, I would highly recommend “The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia” – published July 17, 2008 by Tim Tzouliadis which you can now buy used very cheap.

http://tinyurl.com/pakhtdo

From the book, you will get the “touch and feel” of the entire USSR being one big Auschwitz. There’s lots of detail on how every international hipster Marxist moved there to live in paradise and Stalin killed them all. He killed all of the 10,000 Americans who moved there to build auto plants and live in paradise, all in the 1930s. The entire worldwide hipster brigade vehemently denied the true nature of “socialist” regimes for decades and decades until Pol Pot made that impossible. Then they all became Keynesians.

Stalin had committed most of his murders by 1949 when Mao took over China but by that time, the true nature of Marxist/Leninist socialism was still not widely understood.

WikiLeaks reveals Australian gagging order over political bribery allegations Superinjunction reported to have been issued on 19 June to block reporting of claims involving international politicians

A sweeping gagging order issued in Australia to block reporting of any bribery allegations involving several international political leaders in the region has been exposed by WikiLeaks.

The prohibition emerged from a criminal case in the Australian courts and applies throughout the country. It was issued by the criminal division of the supreme court of Victoria in Melbourne "to prevent damage to Australia's international relations that may be caused by the publication of material that may damage the reputations of specified individuals who are not the subject of charges in these proceedings".

The Australia-wide gagging order is a superinjunction, which means it also contains a clause insisting that the terms of the order itself should remain secret. It was issued on 19 June and states: "Subject to further order, there be no disclosure, by publication or otherwise, of any information (whether in electronic or paper form) derived from or prepared for the purposes of these proceedings including the terms of these orders."

In a statement published with the leak, Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, said the gagging order relates to a case that "concerns the subsidiaries of the Australian central bank".

Mao's approach was more insane and closer to true socialism than that of Stalin, not surprised that he was a bigger catastrophe. Unlike Stalin's totalitarianism the Chinese comrade attempted to truly form decentralized independent closed communes where property was collectively owned.

Even though humans were starving to death inside one commune he did not allow any help from outside because a closer integration like that of an open society is against socialist romanticism. Strange that we figure out all sorts of novel reasons to inflict harm on each other.

"How China Became Capitalist" by Ronald Coase and Ning Wang is an interesting read, their exposition regarding the transition of that country and why Mao is still being venerated there is pretty much rooted on Hayekian approach to interpreting history and to some extend on Chicago school theories also.